Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby Is Well Deserving Of The Hart Memorial Trophy

By Amanda Sklarek

Charles LeClaire – USA Today

Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins is among two other candidates in the running to receive the Hart Memorial Trophy. The Hart Trophy is awarded at the NHL Awards to the player deemed “most valuable to his team” during the regular season.

Unfortunately for Crosby, he can never seem to stay healthy long enough to play a full season. He has suffered multiple injuries that has caused him to miss countless games over several seasons. However, this year was different for the gold medal Olympian, who was able to finish the year virtually unscathed.

Crosby’s performance in the 2013-14 Stanley Cup playoffs was not his best. His mediocre game play was so widely acknowledged that it was all anyone talked about during his team’s short-lived playoff run. Crosby received a lot of negative criticism, but there’s one thing that’s for certain: Crosby is still the best player in the game right now.

Cue angry, negative comments.

When people try to dismiss the fact the Crosby is indeed the best player in the NHL right now, they tend to ignore facts. Facts are not fake, they are not made up, and they are there for a reason.

Despite scoring only one goal and posting eight assists during the postseason, Crosby annihilated the ice during the regular season. Crosby scored 36 goals and posted 68 assists for a gargantuan total of 104 points. The other two Hart Trophy candidates are Ryan Getzlaf of the Anaheim Ducks and Claude Giroux of the Philadelphia Flyers. Getzlaf scored 31 goals and posted 56 assists for a total of 87 points, which is a career-high for him. This is also Getzlaf’s first time being nominated for the Hart Trophy. Giroux scored 28 goals and posted 58 assists for a total of 86 points.

But being deserving of the Hart Trophy isn’t just about scoring goals and posting assists. Besides Crosby’s impressive numbers, he is multi-talented when it comes to other aspects on the ice.

He knows how to step up for his team when players crucial to the rest of the lineup are injured. He is excellent at penalty killing and helping his team get the most out of their power play chances, and is one of the coach’s first choices when it comes to choosing the first set of players for shootouts. He is young, energetic, fast, insane at handling the puck, and still surprising the league every year with his extraordinary talent.

Crosby would still be the Penguins’ most valuable player even if he didn’t receive the Hart Trophy.

Winning awards isn’t something new to Crosby, who has already won the Hart Trophy once before. He has also won several other awards such as the Ted Lindsay award, which he has won three different times and is nominated for again this year. It’s safe to say that Crosby will take home the Hart Memorial Trophy and he is definitely deserving of it.

Amanda Sklarek is a Pittsburgh Penguins writer for RantSports.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandabukowski, “Like” her on Facebook or add her to your network on Google.